


The Green Place

by Moebius



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-23 23:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8347543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/pseuds/Moebius
Summary: Toast knows things.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ember_Keelty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/gifts).



> I've been fascinated with the world of Mad Max since I first saw Beyond Thunderdome one afternoon when I was a kid. So thank you to my recipient for giving me an excuse to play a little in the sandbox. I hope you like the result! I lifted a tiny amount of information from the prequel comics and from some things the writer said about Toast, regarding who she was before she became one of the Wives. 
> 
> There are spoilers for the events of Fury Road.

Toast knows things.

She calls it the Edge Tree. It sits on the cusp of cliff and Wasteland, where the land slopes just enough for the grass to have trouble finding root, so it grows roots extra long and extra strong. Toast comes to the Edge Tree when she can, to feel the grass of this Green Place they found in their own backyard, and stare across the brown. She tracks dust and sand trails, follows them out as far as she can see, clocks speed and weight based on time, clocks time based on the sun. Toast knows things, and one of the things she knows is the numbers behind the world. She caught on to them quicker in the books than the other Wives - Mothers, they call themselves Mothers now, Many Mothers - and heard it in the stories Miss Giddy told them and the music played each night. 

Toast knows numbers well enough to clock the routes, but she doesn’t know herself well enough to understand the why of it. Behind her there is the scuff of heavy boot against thick soil. It’s like the knock on a door. Toast knows who it is, doesn’t move, waits, lets Furiosa sit beside her. Waits another minute. Furiosa waits with her, but only so long. “I’m going to the Bullet Farm, then beyond.” 

Toast turns. “To conquer?” 

“To diplome.” When Toast makes a face, she explains. “To talk. We haven’t heard from them, since… We haven’t heard, and we need to know. I go to make allies, not enemies.” 

“Oh. I think that’s diplomatize. Diplomacy.” 

Furiosa smiles a small smile. Black oil makes the lines around her eyes look all dramatic, like the tattoos on a History Man. She just got in from a convoy, which Toast knew. It's why Toast had come to the Edge Tree. She always comes on the days Furiosa returns, and Furiosa always finds her here, has since their second week back from Fury Road, many weeks ago plus some more, after she’d searched the Citadel only to find Toast on top of it. “I don’t know the words as well as you do.”

“Is that why you’re telling me? So I come and say the words you need?”

“You know the words; you know bullets and guns.” 

“Okay.” 

“And because you should. To learn.”  

“Okay.”

“Because I’d want you shotgunning.” 

Now Toast smiles. “When do we leave?”

Furiosa turns and looks out across the Wasteland. “Tomorrow morning. I’ll… teach you to drive, if you want.” 

Toast’s smile gets wider and she sits up a little straighter. “I know how to drive.” The look in Furiosa’s eyes - shock, a little, and satisfaction - send a warm feeling fluttering across Toast’s skin. 

“What don’t you know, Toast the Knowing?”

The warm feeling gathers in Toast’s cheeks and feels like engine fire. “Plenty. Too much.” She’s uncomfortable now, but doesn’t want Furiosa to know, to think she’s weak. Furiosa places a hand on her knee. The metal one. Toast wonders, not for the first time, why it’s warm. That’s a thing she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t say it. Instead she shrugs, and Furiosa raises an eyebrow, nods once, then stands and leaves.

Toast doesn’t know the why of it, but she watches until Furiosa disappears into the shade of the trees that grow in the Green Place of Many Mothers.

* * *

“How long will you be gone?”

Toast shrugs, moving around her room to collect the few things she wants to take of the few things she owns. Clothes, sturdier than the last time she was in the Wasteland, made for her and not for the Immortan. Two books. Three guns. Cheedo and The Dag meet eyes as Toast packs. “That’s a long time,” Cheedo says, and on cue Keeper cries. Dag coos softly at her daughter before Cheedo reaches across the bed to take the baby. 

“She’s always quiet for you. For me it’s cries and milk, cries and milk.” But Dag doesn’t sound mad about it. 

Toast looks between the two of them and feels like she’s interrupting even though they’re all crowded in her room, around her bed. She clears her throat. “The Bullet Farm isn’t far. I don’t know how long we’ll be there, or how long we’ll be beyond it. Furiosa says-“

“Ooh, Furiosa,” Dag says, and presses her knuckles to her chin. Her eyes go wide in mock surprise. “What  _ does  _ Furiosa say?”

Toast ignores the teasing. “She says we travel until we need to come back.” 

“And are you the special Wife, getting to go with her?”

“I’m not a Wife!” Toast bristles. Dag doesn’t back down. Dag never backs down. Toast knows. Toast doesn’t back down either.

“But you’re not a Mother,” Cheedo says. Like always, her voice calms the room. She presses Keeper close to her chest, as if to shield her from the aggression in the room. “You didn’t want the name.”

Toast remembers Cheedo on the Fury Road and thinks about how far they’ve come.  “It’s not for me. It’s not what I am.” 

“I’m not a mother, but I’m still a Mother.” The meaning in her words is clear. All the Wives but Toast took the name, and the silent promise to watch over the Citadel in a better way than the men who had come before. 

Toast wants to do better, but she knows her better isn’t the same as theirs. She resists the urge to roll her eyes at Cheedo, who is young, but not unkind, not stupid. “You’re a mother to Keeper. And to the pups. And that’s not what I meant.” 

“Oh.”

“Furiosa wouldn’t keep a Wife.” Wives are things. Furiosa knows better than to make people things. She stares defiantly at both Dag and Cheedo.

Dag does roll her eyes. “Go on then, travel until you need to come back. We’ll keep the milk warm for you, Sister.” 

Toast grabs her bag from the bed and her favorite sniper rifle from its perch on the wall. She kisses Keeper on the forehead, then looks back at the Mothers in the room before she leaves, wordlessly.

* * *

The first hours of their trip are wordless, too. It’s only the two of them in the rig, and only their rig on the road. Toast knows what their dust and sand trails would look like from the Edge Tree, and it makes her smile. If Furiosa sees, she makes no remark on it.

After a time, though, she breaks the silence. “Why don’t you become a History Woman?”

Toast thinks about the answer for a moment before she speaks. “I don’t want walls and words. I don’t want to sit all day and pass the stories. I’m good at better things.”

Furiosa shakes her head, disbelieving. “What’s better?”

Toast’s eyes float around the cabin of the rig, across the weapons and the gear shift, until they rest on Furiosa’s hands, gripping the wheel. “Out here’s better.”

“Out here, everything hurts.”

She remembers the words from the Fury Road, but to Toast they were as wrong then as they are now. “Not everything.” She shifts her eyes to look directly at Furiosa, but the woman is staring straight ahead, jaw tight. Eventually Toast settles, sullen, back into her seat, and pulls the sniper rifle in close.

“I didn’t know you kept it.”

“What?”

Furiosa cocks her head to towards Toast, eyes never leaving the road. “Are you sure you want to bring  _ that _ gun to the Bullet Farm?”

“This gun didn’t kill him, the Fool did.” 

“His name is Max.”

Toast grunts noncommittally. 

“I used to think killing wasn’t much. I’m good at it, and there were always more men to take the place of those whose guts and blood I spilled, especially the War Boys who I sent to Valhalla.” She emphasizes the last word with disgust and disdain. “They were in my way when I wanted to escape.”

She’s never said so much about this before, in all the time they’ve spent beneath the Edge Tree, the sunsets and starlights. Toast sits up straighter. “I never killed until I killed Joe.”

“You didn’t kill Joe.” 

“I was a cause in the death he died, wasn’t I? What’s the difference?” 

“That gun caused the death of the Bullet Farmer.” After Toast doesn’t respond, she adds. “What’s the difference?”

Toast still doesn’t answer, and they ride the rest of the way to the Bullet Farm in silence.

* * *

The center of the Bullet Farm is empty. There’s a fountain in the middle, dry mostly, made of guns and bullets melted down. Toast wonders if it’s for decoration, to remind someone of the way towns were before the war that made the Wasteland. She wonders, too, whether water ever flows from it, and what it’d taste like. Blood, she thinks. Metal. The emptiness of the square makes her nervous. Furiosa reaches down and squeezes her shoulder, for comfort. Toast tells herself she doesn’t need comfort.

“We come from the Citadel!” Furiosa shouts into the emptiness of the twilight. Toast knows they’re being watched, so Furiosa must know it, too. The click of two dozen guns is her answer. Toast reaches for a gun at her hip, but Furiosa stops her. She shakes her head once, meets Toast’s eyes, then moves them around to the doors of each building, dark and unknowable. “I’m here to talk! The Farmer’s gone. The Immortan’s gone! Gastown is free! The Citadel is capped with green and water flows free for all. It’s been days past days and we’ve heard no word from the Bullet Farm. We come to make diplomacy, not war.” 

A man steps out of the shadows. Bullets dangle from his ears. His hair is spiked in a straight line from forehead to neck, reaching towards the sky. “We got the bullets; we got the war. What do we need diplomatsing for,  _ ladies _ ? You come bearing  _ our _ weapons, what’s more to say?”

Toast knows the violence in his voice, the sort that can’t be reasoned with. She looks around as others step from buildings, surrounding them. She wills herself into calm, ready and steady because of who stands next to her. And then she sees a blond head poke out, eyes looking for her. Toast knows what to do.

Furiosa talks of peace and trade, promises water and food, asks only for what they think is fair. The Bulleted Man shakes his head. “We know who you are,  _ Imperator _ , we know what you done. If we say no, you got a world full of War Boys to make us farm. You killed my  _ pa _ .” 

“Who’s your pa?”

“The Farmer, you bi-” At the moment he lifts his gun, Toast makes a decision. She steps to the left, in front of Furiosa. His shot rings out and her shoulder explodes into a starburst of pain, but it’s too late. He’s dead. She keeps to her feet and hears Furiosa’s voice behind her, but in the chaos of the moment Toast loses her hold on the world.

* * *

“You shouldn’t have done that!” Furiosa’s voice is high and tight. She pulls the bandage around Toast’s shoulder.

“You wanted to know the things I know,” Toast says past grit teeth. “I know how to read rebellion in the eyes of a girl.” 

Furiosa ties the bandage off. She looks down at hands covered with Toast’s blood and takes a deep, shaky breath. “Don’t get killed.” 

Her voice is so quiet that Toast almost misses what she says. She furrows her brows. “Are you okay?”

In answer, Furiosa falls to her knees and wraps her arms around Toast’s waist. Toast is so shocked that all she can do is sit. And then words come back to her. “I’m the one who was shot today, you know.” She’s worried, because the strongest person she’s ever known is on her knees, clinging to her and crying. She saw her like this once before, but that was different. That was the death of all of Furiosa’s hopes. This is one person. This is Toast, and she doesn’t know why she matters.

Furiosa makes a sound halfway between laugh and sob. “I always tried to stay separate. Apart. Need is a weakness. It builds inside us and then we hope and then hope betrays us. And then…”

“And then what?”

“I was assigned to watch the Wives.”

Toast says nothing. Her shoulder aches, but her flesh is warm where Furiosa clings to her. 

“Don’t get dead, Toast the Knowing. I found hope again. I can’t survive another betrayal.” She looks up at Toast, and the line of tears on her face reminds her of the dust trails that stretch from the Citadel through the Wasteland.

“I want to kiss you.”

“You don’t have to ask.” 

“I do. Have to.” Toast wants Furiosa to understand. This moment between them, this first of what will be many, has to be a choice. It has to be given, not taken. 

Realization enters Furiosa’s eyes. “Okay. You can kiss me.” 

Furiosa’s eyes are green, and bright, like life, and Toast lingers for a moment. She has never looked  _ down  _ at Furiosa before, only up. And now she finally knows the why for all the waiting she did, beneath a tree that teetered over the edge of the world. When they kiss the taste of salt tears and engine oil mingling on both of their lips, the waiting ends, and all the things Toast knows fade away.

  
  
  



End file.
